The idea that God dictated the Bible word for word came out of Princeton Theological Seminary less than a century ago from the pen of Benjamin B. Warfield. I may be wrong about the date but the man lived till 1921, so he would have been writing right about a century ago. Read:

Sandeen, Ernest R. Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millennialism, 1800-1930. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp 120-121.

Briefly stated, he and his predecessors were Calvinists and Calvin taught (according to the Westminster Confession of Faith, says Sandeen) to rely on the Holy Spirit's authority. But that meant to depend on an "inner light," and in the late nineteenth century there were a lot of mystics or enthusiasts around who held beliefs that these Princetonian theologians believed was heretical. So they changed it from "authority of the Holy Spirit" to "authority of the inspired Scripture." Warfield came along later and changed that to "authority of the apostles."

He said we can trust the apostles for whatever evidence. This meant we could trust them for archeaology, science, and history. Since they realistically didn't know all this stuff, they got it from God. Suddenly we had a dictated Bible!

That idea does not go back further than 1900. It's a NEW idea! We don't have to accept it at all.

Fundamentalists are going to believe this. They are going to "prove" that inspiration goes all the way back to the NT because the NT says so itself. And it does say so, but I have read some history of hermeneutics. By "inspiration" the NT writers did NOT mean what we mean today.

We also know that hell did not mean to the NT writers what it means to fundamentalists today. Fundamentalists like to say hell is the absence of God. That is not in the Bible. According to the Bible, it is impossible to get away from God. Therefore, a statement that hell is the absence of God is simply unscriptural.

These are but a few of the items of fundamentalist Christianity that differ from the religion of the apostles of the first century. Research shows that fundamentalist Christianity is a new religion. Unlike what its adherents like to claim, it does NOT go back to the New Testament.

There are ways to get a better idea of what Paul meant than just from reading his letters. I think a surer way is to look at how Jewish teachers taught their students to read their sacred scriptures in their time. Paul claims he was taught at the feet of one of those teachers. So we know approximately how he was taught to read the "Bible" of his day. That does not prove what he believed about the letters he was writing because he obviously had a major change of mind somewhere along the way. Also, I do not think he believed he was writing sacred scripture.

The way his letters got to be canonized might be likened to (maybe I'm stretching analogy too far) letters in the Martyr's Mirror written by Anabaptists 450 years ago. Mennonites today could decide to include them in the Bible. Or Lutherans could decide to include some of Luther's writings in the Bible from the 1500s. Or maybe something from Calvin would merit inclusion. See what I'm getting at? Somebody (Paul) wrote some letters. Many generations later somebody decided to make those letters into sacred texts. A few thousand years later still others believed God himself wrote those letters word for word.

We don't even see reality the same way they did! We don't even read the same way they did! First century Christians saw analogy and figurative speech where fundamentalists today see literal interpretation. If I remember correctly, the Creation Story in Genesis is one such item. Maybe I should go back and reread some of the history of hermeneutic texts. It's impossible to imagine first-century thinking if it's not "painted" for you. At least, it was for me.

Pretend for a bit that fairies and trolls are real. Now forget that you are pretending. Don't be scared. There's a place for all of us--fairies and humans. Just learn the rules. Then you will be okay. Ask permission of the right folks for entry on their space and they will admit you. Be respectful of them and they will trust you. Be aware that you can hurt them. God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the angels--these were the Christian "fairy folk." But they looked totally different in the first century Palestine than they do in the 21st century Western Society. If I explained it for fundamentalists they would probably accuse me of promoting a false doctrine.

Or, maybe you are like Socrates and don't believe in spirits. The world would still look drastically different than it does to us. We can see it from the perspective of space satellite. The best of them could see it only from land-drawn maps covering but a quarter of this one planet, and what could be viewed from that part of the planet.

In a discussion here, it has been suggested that the author of Timothy meant this should apply only to the Jewish scriptures, and that he did not have the entire New Testament before him as we know it today. However, I reply that the men of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see posts above) who decided on the present-day inerrant infallible inspired Word of God doctrine had before them the entire New Testament as we know it today, and they definitely meant for their doctrine to apply to the whole of it.

It just happened to be very convenient that one of the NT writers provided them with the scriptural words to authorize the doctrine they were going to institute anyway. Because I am quite sure they would have found a way to institute the doctrine whether or not that verse in Timothy had been written.

Another controversial verse is as follows:



Apparently the guy who said it always lies because he's a Cretian. If he's lying about whether or not Cretians lie, then I guess Cretians always tell the truth. But then he couldn't be lying because he's a Cretian. And so it goes on and on in circles.

Did I hear something about inerrant???

Oh yeah, now I get it. It's inscrutable. If something is inscrutable, (for the Christian) it must be one of two things: stupid as in too crazy to make sense, or sublimely mystical beyond human understanding.

Since the first is unacceptable it MUST be the second.

In case anyone finds the second unacceptable the Bible assures us that there is such a thing as spiritual insight that far supersedes the natural insight of the carnal minded. See my post of May 26, 2008 in Why Do Christians Think Morals Come From God? How about we call that what it is: a cop-out.

I am a spiritual person and understand spiritual enlightenment and insight. The Christian may not accept it but so what. They wouldn't accept Jesus, either, if he showed up and expounded some of the deeper stuff of the mystics. Some of the inscrutable stuff is inscrutable because it's nonsense.